


What Hurts

by JayceCarter



Series: Random Fallout Shenanigans [10]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Revenge, Spoilers, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 16:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11383770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayceCarter/pseuds/JayceCarter
Summary: Charmer betrayed them all, and Deacon wants to know why.





	What Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm procrastinating on my other works. I'm sorry!

Fuck. Dying hurts. Turns out stomach gunshot wounds aren’t the fun and games the Railroad promised me when they recruited me. Join the Railroad. Follow the Freedom Trail. Have a party.

 

Bullshit.

 

Across the room, Tom has stopped his gasping, going the way Dez had, the way Glory had. All gone, all still, leaving me alone in the silence.

 

Always me and silence, me and darkness, like jet and psycho, best fucking pals.

 

The switchboard had fallen around me, but it hadn’t killed me. Op after op I’d lived through. I’d started thinking nothing could kill me.

 

Leave it to Charmer to prove me wrong.

 

“Speak the devil’s name and she will appear,” I wheeze.

 

Charmer stands in front of me, the light behind her casting her in shadow, like a demon there to taunt me. “You’re hard to kill.”

 

“A skill I’ve honed over many almost-deaths. Forgive me for not getting up, but you know, dying and all.” I meet her gaze and it’s empty, nothing but an old can with all the cram already scooped clean. “Why did you come back?”

 

She sits in front of me, long legs crossing like besties at a sleep over. “Because I knew you wouldn’t be dead yet. The others? Sure, but not you. You’re like me. We keep moving no matter what.”

 

“Hate to be the one to tell you, but I think my moving days are over.” My hand covers the wound in my stomach like it could staunch the blood. “So, what did they give you that was worth betraying us? Better than beer money?”

 

“A little better. They gave me a future. Here, I’d be trapped in this rubble forever, just a rusty cog in a breaking machine. There, I have the chance to be something. This was all my past, and sometimes you have to burn your past to make way for your future. I never wanted to kill you, Deacon. I could still save you.” She holds up a stimpack. “You could help me build our future.”

 

Funny, as she talks, I realize I never knew her. Of course, with what she offers me, she never knew me either. It soothes the sting a bit, that I fooled her as much as she fooled me.

 

Maybe we do belong together. Two side of the same fucked-up coin. She wants it; I want it. Fucking perfect.

 

I whisper.

 

“What was that?”

 

I whisper again, blood leaking from my lips, trailing down my chin.

 

Charmer leans in. She smells like mint and blood and ash, like she always has.

 

I grasp her shirt. “Maybe we are the same. You burned our past; I’ll burn our future.”

 

The grenade pin clicks as I stare into the eyes that ruined everything, that changed everything, and all that stares back is myself until everything goes white.

 

Turns out, it isn’t the dying that hurts; it’s all the shit you have to go through to get there.

 

 


End file.
